Dark Samus
Dark Samus (ダークサムス Dāku Samusu), known as Samus Oscura in Spanish and Italian and Samus Sombre in French, was a being of Phazon taking on the form of Samus Aran. She made a brief cameo appearance in the secret ending of Metroid Prime, was a central character and the final boss in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and was the main antagonist in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. History Metroid Prime 2: Echoes Dark Samus landed on Aether an unknown amount of time before Samus arrived in search of lost Federation soldiers. The Space Pirates mistook Dark Samus for Samus Aran but were confounded by her aberrant behavior; instead of destroying the Pirates, she consumed their Phazon, only killing those that attempted to stop her from doing so. Her irrepressible infiltration and repeated raids cost the Pirates much in the way of Phazon, and she even crippled their stealth field generator on at least one occasion, leaving them especially vulnerable to Federation attack. It was only after Samus Aran made planetfall on Aether that the Pirates realized they were dealing with a second Hunter, and considered trying to forge an alliance with Dark Samus in an effort to repel Samus's assaults. Samus first encounters Dark Samus inside an abandoned Galactic Federation base set up by the GFMC Task Force Herakles on Aether. Samus follows Dark Samus through a Dark Portal leading to Dark Aether and finds her absorbing Phazon on the other side of the portal. Dark Samus destroys a Light Crystal that Samus is near to, allowing a group of Warrior Ing to swarm in and steal most of Samus's equipment. Samus narrowly manages to escape from the Ing before Dark Aether's atmosphere causes any severe damage to her. Later, Samus briefly encounters Dark Samus in a Space Pirate facility in the Agon Wastes. Dark Samus shuts off the most direct route through the facility, forcing Samus to take a different route. Shortly thereafter, Samus finds Dark Samus in the Main Reactor, absorbing more Phazon once again, and engages her in battle. Dark Samus uses many variations of Samus's weaponry, but Samus defeats her counterpart. However, contrary to appearances, Dark Samus was not destroyed entirely. Samus comes across Dark Samus again in the Training Chamber of Torvus Bog. Dark Samus reforms, laughs, and then dissipates without attempting to intimidate or attack Samus. Her intentions during this encounter were unclear, and Dark Samus does not show herself to Samus again until she travels to Sanctuary Fortress. When Samus arrives at the Sanctuary Entrance on her way out, Dark Samus again confronts Samus. Dark Samus destroys the bridge structure here in an attempt to prevent Samus from using it to access the elevator leading from Sanctuary to the Temple Grounds. Despite the bridge being destroyed, Samus is able to use her recently recovered Spider Ball to cross the newly-formed gap. They encounter one another again in the Sanctuary; on this occasion, Samus finds Dark Samus obliterating three Dark Pirate Troopers attempting to force her to take a detour to access the Phazon. Samus follows after Dark Samus. They engage in combat again in the nearby Aerie Access elevator, which Dark Samus activates, and the battle continues into the Aerie Transport Station chamber. Though Dark Samus demonstrates several new techniques, including a powerful variant of the Charge Beam, an augmented Boost system, and the ability to render herself invisible to the normal light spectrum, Samus is able to defeat her again. Dark Samus then staggers and falls off of the edge of the fortress, though data indicates that she will be able to reform herself after sustaining any damage short of total atomic disruption. Not long after Samus eliminates the Emperor Ing and acquires the Light of Aether from Dark Aether's final Energy Controller, the planet becomes unstable. While Samus attempts to escape Dark Aether, Dark Samus blocks her path with a wall of Phazon in an attempt to impede Samus's escape. By this time, Dark Samus has absorbed excessive amounts of Phazon into her system rendering her unstable without venting excess Phazon energy. After Samus deals adequate damage to her, Dark Samus temporarily becomes a being of pure Phazon energy and creates a shield impervious to all weaponry, save for blasts of Phazon. By using her Charge Beam, Samus draws in expelled Phazon then fires it back at Dark Samus. After several blasts, Dark Samus disintegrates. After Samus successfully completes her mission on Aether and departs, a cloud of Phazon in space above the planet coalesces and forms a new body for Dark Samus. It seems that she was unable to maintain this form, as she is later collected by Space Pirates in the form of raw Phazon. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption After her defeat on Aether, Dark Samus's remains are picked up by the Space Pirate battleship Colossus, which had been retrieving the remainder of the Phazon on the planet Aether. Dark Samus was able to regain her form using energy from Phazon stored on board. Once she regained her form, she proceeded to kill a third of the Space Pirates on the ship. Dark Samus then brainwashes the remainder of the Pirates into following her. After subduing the Space Pirates, Dark Samus leaves them adrift and ventures off alone to the planet Phaaze, the source of all Phazon. She returns to her followers atop a Leviathan, a destructive seed of Phaaze; she orders the Space Pirates to follow her back through a wormhole to her homeworld, and those who refused were slaughtered. With the aid of her corrupted disciples, Dark Samus invades the G.F.S. Valhalla to acquire an Aurora Unit with which she might better control her living planet. Outmatched by their Phazon-powered weapons, the Valhalla was rendered helpless, the Aurora Unit 313 taken, and the crew jettisoned into space. Dark Samus takes the Aurora Unit to Phaaze, implants it there, and takes command of the entire planet. From there, she sends a Leviathan to the Pirate Homeworld, using it to corrupt all the Space Pirates living there and gradually turning the Pirate Homeworld into a living planet of Phazon like Phaaze. Dark Samus launches three additional Leviathans, destined for Bryyo, Elysia, and Norion. Dark Samus goes to Norion herself to ensure the Leviathan's impact, since it is heavily guarded by the Galactic Federation. The Leviathans bound for Bryyo and Elysia strike successfully, but the one headed for Norion fails. Samus Aran, Rundas, Ghor, and Gandrayda manage to repulse the Norion attack, but Dark Samus infects the four hunters with Phazon. Samus was able to resist Phazon's corrupting influence, but the three other bounty hunters eventually succumbed and became the servants of Dark Samus. Samus heads to the location of each impacted Leviathan, defeating a corrupted Hunter and a mammoth Leviathan Guardian at each planet. She then uses the Leviathan that Dark Samus used to take the Space Pirates to Phaaze to warp to Phaaze. The only direct battle between Samus and Dark Samus happens on Phaaze. After her defeat, Dark Samus merges with Aurora Unit 313. Samus destroys the Aurora Unit, which purges the Phazon from her, and Dark Samus is exterminated with no signs of survival. Personality Dark Samus, as her name implies, is shown to be cold, calculating, and merciless. The lives of her opponents hold little to no value to her. When necessary, she uses her opponents as she sees fit. A prominent example of this is when she corrupts Rundas, Ghor, and Gandradya and uses them to battle Samus, only to absorb their powers upon their defeats. The extent of her cruelty is described in one of the Pirate Logs, where she is said to have ordered her Pirate forces to jettison the surviving crew members of the G.F.S. Valhalla raid into space. Dark Samus only seems to show compassion toward Metroids, like herself. In Echoes, she takes an interest in the Metroids being researched by the Pirates in Agon Wastes and frees them. Dark Samus is also greedy for Phazon, as, throughout the entire Prime series, her goal is to consume said-substance. She will kill anyone in her way, as the Space Pirate Logs in Echoes mention that Dark Samus only killed those who denied her Phazon. Her personality undergoes a great change between Echoes and Corruption. In Echoes, she's portrayed as rather insane, shown by her maniacal laughter and chaotic attack patterns. In Corruption, she's significantly calmer. She's shown to be quite cunning, capable of long-range planning, and remains tranquil even as her plans are not going accordingly. The massive invasion she led on Norion would have succeeded, if not for Samus Aran. Powers and abilities As Dark Samus, the creature utilized many abilities similar to Samus, in more powerful forms. She could fire two types of Phazon beams (which the scan mentioned to be altered versions of the Power Beam) at enemies in the form of either a continuous stream of small shard-like bursts, or a thin laser Beam which she shot in an arc. She possessed standard Missiles as well as Super Missiles to blast opponents into bits. Also, she used what appeared to be a Phazon-charged Ice Spreader attack. She could also do a powerful dive bomb attack (which could be a Phazon-based Screw Attack, Shinespark or a combination of both), a Phazon Boost Ball that generated vast amounts of kinetic energy in alarmingly short times, raise pillars of crystallized Phazon in this form, is capable of both flight and levitation, and can render herself invisible; it is interesting to note that her Morph Ball form contained an eyeball on each side of the sphere. However, when Dark Samus consumed too much Phazon, she gained the disadvantages she possessed as Metroid Prime: although she was eventually able to render herself invulnerable to all conventional weaponry, Phazon fired at her could overload and destabilize her, resulting in her generating very powerful Phazon attacks to discharge the used Phazon radiation from her body, including a massive beam of pure, highly concentrated Phazon. In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Dark Samus' abilities are further augmented. In addition to most of her previous abilities, she can now produce near-perfect clones of herself (fittingly called "Dark Echoes") and is much more resilient to Phazon attacks (though Hyper Missiles are still effective on her). Combining with the Echoes temporarily also allowed her to form a purple energy shield around her body which rendered her invulnerable until she had to separate back into herself and the Echoes. After she unleashed the massive blast of Phazon at the four Hunters using what appears to be a version of the Charge Beam, the corruption within them seemed to be connected to Dark Samus; after the defeat of each hunter, a strange, black, wraith-like entity in the shape of Dark Samus would appear above the hunters, and fly off into space, presumably back to Dark Samus herself. This seems to be the manner through which she gained the Hunters' abilities, such as Ghor's Plasma Beam, Gandrayda's ground-based energy wave, and the ability to create giant Phazon pillars like Rundas could with ice. It is also possible that this entity was a form of Dark Samus herself interpreted as some sort of astral projection, which she used to possess the Hunters. She also has the ability to merge with the stolen Aurora Unit at the climax of the game, a technique which may have also been adapted from Ghor or connected with her apparent possession abilities. After this merge, the mutated Aurora Unit is capable of launching out holographic-like Dark Echoes from its eye; these copies will either shoot at Samus or enter Morph Ball mode and boost around the area in an attempt to ram her (reminiscent of her attack in the previous game). She is notably more agile in Corruption than in Echoes, able to perform graceful backflips and cartwheels. In Echoes, Dark Samus seems to be somewhat incomplete; this is supported by the fact that she is constantly absorbing Phazon, looks slightly deformed, and has a range of chaotic attack moves. In Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime's tentacle was broken off of Samus prematurely, possibly not absorbing enough DNA to create a whole, stable Dark Samus. Dark Samus seems to act mentally unstable in Echoes cutscenes, even laughing maniacally in several instances. In the same game, Dark Samus also became physically unstable due to excessive Phazon exposure. While her physical body continues to be unstable in Prime 3: Corruption, she is surprisingly calm and attacks in a more organized and orderly method, suggesting she has absorbed sufficient Phazon to reach a stable mentality; this also explains how she was able to brainwash the Pirates, plan the coordinates of the Leviathan impact locations, and steal Aurora Unit 313. Dark Samus is a very durable life-form, able to regenerate from any injury short of total atomic disruption, and traveling unaided through space and freely between the Dark and Light Dimensions of Aether, and even showing immunity to the caustic atmosphere of Dark Aether. She can survive in the vastness of space, travel through it, and survive the explosions of planets, even dimensions. This is how she has constantly been able to regenerate herself after defeat and fly to another planet for Phazon absorption. Her incredible regenarative abilities combined with Phazon-ehhanced versions of Samus' devastating abilites make her nearly impossible to defeat. In fact, she may have temporarily held the place of most powerful being in the Metroid universe. During the events of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, she singlehandedly defeated the highly skilled bounty hunters Rundas, Ghor and Gandrayda. Though Samus held up better than the others, Dark Samus defeated all four of them with one blast of Phazon. Considering Samus herself seldom loses battles, even against ten-meter tall opponents, this is an impressive feat. Her massive durability at the climax at Phaaze, even against Hypermode's chaotic and devastating power just furthers this possibility. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption also reveals her to be sentient and capable of long-range planning, as noted through a series of Space Pirate data logs that record the fanaticism she inspires among the mind-warped pirates. They detail her plans and how she reacts to certain events, and credit her with being something near a deity whose rule of the galaxy will be great. She might have been and may still be the greatest threat ever to the Galactic Federation, and Samus's most powerful opponent to date. Gallery Category:Nintendo Characters Category:Metroid Characters Category:Nintendo GameCube Debut Category:All Characters